Mr. Arthur Arnold (M.P. for Salford) has drawn up an
excellent programme for Land-law reform, which has secured the cordial approval of Mr. Bright. Its points are,—(1), the abolition of the law of primogeniture ; (2), abolition of copy. hold and customary tenure ; (3), prohibition of the settlement of land upon unborn persons and of the creation of life-estates in land ; (4), conveyance by registration of title; (5), provision for the sale of encumbered settled property. That, or something like that, includes the most useful of Land-law reforms ; and Mr. Bright, in his letter, speaks of it as sufficient, and as likely to be far more useful to the nation than the wild schemes which the advocates of a nationalisation of the land have brought before the people. Mr. Bright clearly is not prepared to throw his influence into the scale of extravagant Democracy ; and we should not be surprised, in case Lord Randolph Churchill should really venture to contest his seat, to find that young gentleman reproaching Mr. Bright with the obsoleteness of his Liberalism, and speaking of the great Free-trader as an extinct species of Democrat, worthy to be classed only with the Mort and the Dock.
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